"Thank you," Eve suddenly said, snapping him away from her status screen. Her expression was a little different from anything he had ever seen on the girl’s face before, she looked a little timid.

"If you can’t keep up, then you will be left behind," he stated flatly. "So try to keep up."

The girl nodded as she watched him sit up.

"You’re leaving?" she asked, already loading a follow-up to his reply.

"Yes," he replied, already walking toward the door before she could suggest otherwise.

***

He moved quickly toward his room, remembering Nyla mentioning something about heading there too. Now that he thought about it, didn’t Ning Xiaoyu mention something similar?

Luckily for him, he wouldn’t have to dwell long on what exactly the girls meant, as when he entered the final floor of the tower, where his room was, he heard a loud commotion from his room, to which the door was already open.

BANG!

Something crashed against the wall in his room, rattling almost the entire floor.

"What the hell is going on?!" he cursed as he dashed inside only to find two familiar figures in the middle of a stand off.

Nyla, with her hammer raised high, Ning Xiaoyu with her longsword drawn, both of them were breathing hard, and both of them stood with the particular focused stillness of people who had been at this for a while and hadn’t finished yet.

Neither of them had noticed him in the doorway. They were too busy staring down at each other.

Damon took a moment to look at the two of them before his attention was stolen by his surroundings. His room was completely wrecked by whatever had happened before his arrival.

The table had been split clean down the middle, the chairs reduced to kindling scattered across the floor.

One of the windows had a fresh crack running diagonally across it. His bed stood half collapsed, one side caved in under an impact that suggested someone had either been thrown onto it or had used it as cover, neither of which was particularly reassuring.

"What is going on?" Damon asked.

Only now did the two girls realise he was there. They turned almost at the same time, their angered expression not changing before the two of them spoke at the same time, their fingers pointing at one another.

"She was in your room!"

"She was in your room!"

If it wasn’t for the mess they caused, it would’ve been almost comical how they said it at the same time. But not to Damon, who had no time to deal with some nonsense, not when he saw how easily a single enemy lieutenant dealt with two of their citadel’s finest fighters.

"We’re at war," he stated flatly. "We don’t have time for nonsense. You two should be training, not wasting your time playing around in my room." 𝕗𝐫𝚎𝗲𝘄𝐞𝕓𝐧𝕠𝘃𝕖𝐥.𝐜𝚘𝚖

Ning Xiaoyu blinked while Nyla opened her mouth to retort, but she had no chance to, as Damon continued. "I will be unavailable for a while. At the same time, the two of you should focus on training."

"Are you going somewhere?" Nyla asked.

"I’ll be in my Domain, working on my swordsmanship. While I’m there, the two of you should train together. Nyla’s stronger, and Ning Xiaoyu is faster. It’s a good opportunity for the two of you to work on your weak points."

The girls took a quick glance at one another before nodding in unison. As much as they might not have liked each other, they both most certainly respected Damon, so hearing this from him had a lot of weight.

Ning Xiaoyu was the first to leave Damon’s room, staying quiet and composed as she always did, while Nyla lingered a moment behind. Observing Damon with a sorry expression of someone who knew they were wrong.

"We’re at war, Nyla." He suddenly said, noticing her gaze. "I expect a lot from you."

Nyla’s eyes lit up upon hearing those words, and she quickly nodded. "I won’t disappoint!" she exclaimed as she rushed out of his room with a little too much enthusiasm for someone who just looked like she was attending a funeral.

When the door to his room, which was now also a little crooked, clicked shut behind her, Damon stood in the wreckage for a moment. The broken table, the collapsed bed and the cracked window.

He looked at all of it with the expression of someone too tired to be properly annoyed and too pragmatic to dwell on it.

He let out a long exhale.

For a moment, he found himself missing the old days when it was just him and Ayame surviving in the abandoned apartment buildings. As much as he enjoyed the company of those around him, he much more preferred the peace and solitude of being alone.

This memory lane, however, didn’t stay pleasant for long. He found himself remembering her last words almost against his will, the way he always did when he stopped moving, and the noise around him dropped low enough for the memory to surface.

The painful reason why he couldn’t follow her, the weight of her words, which had been dawning on him since her disappearance.

’Too weak...’ he echoed the words in his head, his face hardening.

He wasted too much time dealing with people and their politics. It was time to get stronger, strong enough not to be left behind.

With a single thought, he activated his domain and vanished from his room.

The biting cold of the castle made of black ice struck him almost immediately, while the familiar figure of the Dark Knight welcomed him with the usual bow.

Damon took a second to take in that coldness before turning his gaze toward his summon, which was already awaiting his command.

"Attack."

The Dark Knight didn’t need to be told twice as it rose to its feet and dashed forward with its blade raised high, without skipping a single beat.